Tag Archives: Hasbro

The iron, forced upon young girl Monopoly players everywhere, has been ousted by the Internet generation. Here’s to that new Monopoly token, a cat, clawing away at old gender roles.

Are you thinking: How silly! How outdated. I can’t believe kids of olden times had to deal with that housewife bias.

At first, I was. I never even knew what that iron was for. Isn’t it great that Monopoly has the guts to be progressive while so much of kidworld becomes ever more gender segregated?

Here’s just the latest example of sexist stereotyping from my Twitter feed today: Hasbro’s pink Heartbreaker Bow, part of the new Nerf Rebelle line for girls. Rebelle, seriously? Gag.

The Heartbreaker Bow attempts to mutate the archery craze– incited after girls finally got to see Hollywood images of powerful bow wielding heroines like Merida of “Brave” and Katniss of “The Hunger Games”– into something cuter and more “feminine.”

Yesterday on my Twitter feed? This display of books from Harrod’s in London:

So good for Monopoly, a new leader in saying no to gender segregation. But then something occurred to me. Even I, a 44 year old woman obsessed with the gendering of toys, had no idea that the iron was created for girl players. Do kids today even know what an iron is? No one irons anymore. That’s when I got it: It’s not the sexism that’s outdated, its the iron. Girls don’t know that they’re supposed to pick the iron. Monopoly isn’t abandoning sexism but updating it. The iron is being replaced with…a kitty.